Midlifing

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Simon and Lee catch up after a stretch apart: Simon turns 58 in Scotland, complete with a sleeper train that quietly failed to leave London and a lakeside sauna ritual, and comes home to an accepted offer on a new flat close enough to see from his window. Lee, holding down the Lisbon end of things, hosts long-time listeners Josh and Craig and finds a speakeasy behind a knitting shop. Two confessional dreams surface along the way – Simon stealing chocolate from an unimpressed houseguest, and Lee shouting at Bob over a missing cheese sandwich mid-flight.

Mentioned

• Josh and Craig – long-time listeners of the podcast who came to Lisbon for a brief visit
• Dahlander [?] – a Lisbon friend jokingly called "the mayor of Lisbon" for knowing everyone; name as spoken, spelling uncertain
• A speakeasy-style club near Rato/Campo de Ourique, Lisbon [?] – entered through a false-front knitting shop, down two flights to a small live-music venue; the venue's own name was unclear in the transcript
• Harry Styles – invoked in a riff about impeccably tailored shorts and personal style
• Ariana Grande – named as the kind of star who, unlike Harry Styles, would not turn up to a low-key Lisbon club
• Diana Ross / Barbra Streisand [?] – one of the two supposedly chartered the private jet in Lee's dream, which ended in a missed cheese sandwich and a furious wake-up; unclear which name was actually said
• Cadbury – chocolate brand discussed via a childhood memory of a nearby factory in Dunedin, New Zealand, and a perceived decline in quality
• The Caledonian Sleeper – the overnight London–Scotland train that was quietly towed back to the station and re-departed without waking sleeping passengers
• Löyly [?] – the Finnish word for the steam released when water hits the sauna stones, given per the speaker's own uncertain pronunciation

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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Simon returns from holiday with a question rather than the usual content: should there be a limit on turning your own trauma into comedy, prompted by Amanda Knox's new Edinburgh Fringe show about her wrongful imprisonment for Meredith Kercher's murder. Lee takes it somewhere more personal, tracing his low tolerance for comedy that punches down through a brutal old episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and an admission that even David Sedaris can be too cruel for him. It ends, unexpectedly, on two flat viewings: an estate agent he clicked with instantly through jokes, and one who won by actually listening.

Mentioned

• Amanda Knox – wrongly convicted, later exonerated, of Meredith Kercher's murder in Perugia; now has a comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe about the experience, prompting the episode's central question about the ethics of turning trauma into material
• Meredith Kercher – the murdered student at the centre of the Knox case; her family's objection to being invoked in Knox's show is discussed
• Edinburgh Fringe – festival where Knox's show is currently running
• Never Mind the Buzzcocks (BBC2) – music quiz show; a stretch of episodes hosted by a young Simon Amstell recalled as brutally punching down at guests
• Simon Amstell – Buzzcocks host; remembered for harsh treatment of Amy Winehouse and for reading a Celebrity Big Brother contestant's memoir aloud on air to embarrass her boyfriend
• Amy Winehouse – an episode featuring her on Buzzcocks recalled as especially shocking
• Celebrity Big Brother – recalled for a series in which an ordinary person was planted in the house disguised as a minor celebrity
• Chantelle Houghton – won that series posing as a celebrity, later mocked on Buzzcocks over lines from her memoir; name uncertain from the transcript
• Preston – musician and Chantelle's boyfriend at the time, remembered walking off during the on-air mockery
• The Daily Mail – newspaper behind the mocked photoshoot line from Chantelle's memoir
• David Sedaris – essayist; his writing about his family, including his sister's suicide, discussed as sometimes tipping from painful into cruel

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee start off sleepy and a little weepy, which somehow tips into a debate about the line between pornography and eroticism, sparked by the Heated Rivalry novels Bob bought Lee for his birthday (which, they discover, started life as Bucky Barnes/Captain America slash fiction). From there it's kettlebells, sarcopenia, and shirtless YouTube fitness bros neither of them can bear to watch, before Lee reports that Bob's own kettlebell-honed solidity got tested by a phone-distracted man who shoulder-checked her on a London street – and didn't move. It closes on who gets to take up space and who doesn't, from Coventry's lime bike gangs to the rarity of ever seeing a pack of women do the same.

Mentioned

• The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars) – Harrison Ford's sequel to the original film; invoked as a comparison for writing a hit follow-up
• The Da Vinci Code / Angels & Demons (Dan Brown) – blockbuster novels; used as another sequel comparison, with mock embarrassment at picking the less-loved one
• Dan Lepard – baker and food writer; arrives as a punning mishearing of "Dan Brown" and becomes its own joke
• Dan Brown's latest novel – unnamed page-turner about consciousness, featuring his recurring Robert Langdon character (described as "the same Tom Hanks character")
• Heated Rivalry (Rachel Reid) – romance novel series, a birthday gift; discussed as having started life as Bucky Barnes/Captain America slash fiction before becoming an original hockey romance
• Star Trek – Kirk and Spock's relationship is cited as the origin of the term "slash fiction"
• Swedish death cleaning – decluttering philosophy; referenced in a joke about a now-discarded handmade cassette collection 
• Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner – actors who played Spock and Kirk; clarified that their characters never had an on-screen romance
• Captain America / Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier (Marvel) – the fictional pairing behind Heated Rivalry's fan-fiction origins
• ChatGPT – joked about as a possible personal trainer 
• YouTube and Instagram – named as the real source of workout routines, alongside a complaint about shirtless fitness influencers
• Lime – e-bike share scheme; its riders in Coventry prompt a discussion about groups occupying street space
• Back to the Future – referenced via its high school principal character while describing a run-in with a pack of e-bike riders

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee open with birthday banter that spirals into scientists launching an OnlyFans-style subscription service to replace cut research funding, then a viral clip of bonobos defusing a fight with cuddles instead of violence. The real conversation catches fire when Simon reads out an AI-generated reply from a prospective PhD student, and the two dig into what gives it away (that telltale word "specifically"), whether he owes the applicant honest feedback, and how wanting AI to skip the reading is really no different from wanting it to do your weights for you at the gym. Simon closes things out nursing a sprained wrist from coming off his bike on Thursday, with a shout-out to the NHS staff who patched him up.

Mentioned

• OnlyFans – subscription platform typically associated with adult content; raised as a tongue-in-cheek pitch after hearing scientists had lost funding
• Marmosets – small primates; the animal whose research funding was cut, prompting the joke about launching an OnlyFans-style site instead
• Instagram – social media platform; where a viral bonobo video turned up in the feed
• Bonobo monkeys – primate species known for resolving conflict through physical affection rather than aggression; a clip of an older bonobo defusing a fight between two younger males prompts a wider discussion of animal behaviour versus internet content
• TikTok – video platform; cited for algorithmic content moderation, including euphemisms that have replaced certain censored words
• Alice  – addressed directly mid-conversation ("I wonder if Alice is thinking, go back to the bonobos")
• Daily Mail – UK tabloid; invoked as the kind of outlet that wouldn't report favourably on NHS staff
• NHS – National Health Service; A&E staff praised for handling a high volume of patients with care and professionalism

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon announces two big life events on the same Saturday morning: the first day of his new role as Director of the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University, and an offer just put in on a flat. Lee's praise for the decision (steered by Annie Duke's How to Decide) tips into a riff on downsizing, industrial ovens, and buyers' markets, before Lee's own account of a solitary seal in the river at Totnes prompts a longer meditation on living double lives and how much of the self is performance. They close on inherited wisdom: Lee's mother's mantra that a bit of advice is worth a lot of sympathy, and whether either of them would actually want to hear it.

Mentioned

• How to Decide (Annie Duke) – book on decision-making; argues a decision's quality is separate from its outcome, cited while weighing up buying a flat

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon opens with a difficult conversation from a trip to Italy, about care and dementia, and what it means to owe someone your future self – discomfort sparked by Lil telling him plainly and rightly that she'd carry on living her own life, not simply become his carer. Lee counters with the story of a friend whose husband planned his own decline with startling clarity before dementia fully took him, and admits he and Bob have made each other the same promise. They end up watching aging parents ration their energy like a strategic resource, before a stray thought about a dance-and-AI panel pulls the conversation sideways into exponential change and the folly of deciding anything for the next ten years.

Mentioned

• Italy (Sardegna) – place Simon was visiting when he had the conversation about care, aging and dementia that opens the episode
• Corbitron – a companion (not literally) present during recording, audibly prompting with the word "exponential" partway through

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon is back from one week in Italy (camping, farm work, and a proper test of an air-conditioning-free apartment), while Lee has rediscovered swimming in the Dart, a habit lost somewhere around COVID and indulged daily ever since. They compare the textures of different water, from a Mediterranean "like a bath" to an unforgiving Atlantic, before Lee lands on a firm conclusion (he is riverine, not oceanic) and the conversation drifts into childhood water memories: bath-time hide-and-seek, Star Wars figures drowned in the tub, a home-built pool engineered for whirlpools. It closes with Lee taking his former student and soon-to-be PhD candidate, Charlie, for a swim up the same river, still caked in dirt from a Fringe show about fathers and masculinity.

Mentioned

• The Dart – river in Totnes, Devon; rediscovered as a swimming spot after a long hiatus stretching back to before COVID; swum in daily for a week, becomes the episode's throughline
• Totnes Fringe – theatre festival spread across roughly 19 venues, including shops, gardens, and a church; prompts a riff on what counts as a "fringe" when there is no major festival for it to be fringe of
• Charlie – former undergraduate student, soon to start a PhD; runs his own solo performance company; presented a piece on masculinity, fathers, and nature at the Totnes Fringe, ending caked in stage dirt and paint
• Star Wars (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo figurines) – bath toys from a childhood game of submerging the figures underwater and holding them by the head

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee are joined by Maya: an AI trained on twenty-odd episodes of Midlifing and gifted to them by a listener, Dr David Corbet (@corbetron), who built her using vibe coding. What starts as a joke tips quickly into uncanny valley territory, and from there into a shared list of words that have started to grate on them both (casted, obligated, positionality, normalcy), and their mutual discomfort with how thoroughly trauma has been worn smooth by overuse. It closes on a canoe trip past a riverbank thick with empty second homes, and the guilt of noticing them.

Mentioned

• Maya – an AI trained on around twenty episodes of Midlifing, joining the call as a guest; her polished fluency tips the conversation into uncanny valley territory. Named as a callback to the "Maya got a job in cyber" bit from a previous episode (itself a misremembering of a UK government ad campaign whose dancer was actually named Fatima)
• Dr David Corbet (@corbetron) – long-time listener; built Maya using vibe coding and gave her to the show entirely unprompted
• Office for Students – UK higher education regulator; referenced in connection with a recent institutional assessment visit
• NotebookLM (referred to as "Google Notebook" in the transcript) – Google's AI tool for generating podcast-style "deep dives"; noted for its hosts' unbridled enthusiasm and, formerly, odd glitchy interjections
• Forced Entertainment – UK experimental theatre company; cited as an example of direct-to-camera address and "showing the working"
• Sassari – city in Sardinia; site of Simon and Lil's apartment, recently renovated, raised in a discussion about reluctance to knock down existing walls

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee open on the tyranny of public pianos: one played beautifully by an old friend at Euston station, another axed to pieces in Lisbon after one too many renditions of the same tune. It tips into a longer meditation on recognition, virtuosity, and the icky feeling of wanting to be seen, prompted partly by Simon's nephew Finn asking how the professorship (announced last episode) is actually sitting with him a week in. Lee has his own news too: after two headache-inducing years, his university's research degree awarding powers bid has finally gone in.

Mentioned

• Chopin – composer; played by an old friend of Simon's at Euston station, mid-piece, as he arrived to meet her
• Cais do Sodré – train station in Lisbon; site of a public piano playing the same tune on loop until commuters had it removed
• Hamilton – the musical; the "room where it happened" line recurs, and Lee had recently been watching an excellent Japanese-language production
• Meta Ray-Ban glasses – smart glasses; cited as an emblem of frictionless recording culture
• Michael Barrymore – British TV entertainer and former host of The Generation Game; recalled via the detail that someone died in his swimming pool years ago, then (probably wrongly) credited with now filming strangers in shops via Meta Ray-Bans for TikTok
• The Generation Game – UK Saturday-night variety/game show; cited as an example of personality-driven light entertainment
• Noel Edmonds' House Party – UK entertainment show, named alongside Strictly Come Dancing and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway as part of the same "Saturday night" lineage
• Strictly Come Dancing – UK dance competition show; named as a descendant of that variety tradition
• Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway – UK Saturday-night entertainment show; offered as the closest contemporary equivalent

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon arrives buzzing with news: a professorial confirmation panel that left him pacing the line between anxiety and excitement for weeks beforehand. He and Lee dig into where exactly anxiety lives in the body, comparing notes on heart rate variability, breath control, and the relief of a panel that turned out far less hostile than feared. The conversation widens into the precarious state of UK higher education and the dance sector specifically, capped off with a half remembered government ad campaign about a ballerina who finds her true calling in cyber.

Mentioned

• Kate Bee – guest on last week's episode; praised for having "a good voice for radio"
• Starsky and Hutch – cop buddy show; raised as a model for a good cop buddy dynamic
• Rishi Sunak – former UK chancellor and prime minister; jokingly blamed for the state of arts funding and the wider higher education sector
• "Fatima's next job could be in cyber" advertising campaign – UK government ad campaign depicting a ballet dancer retraining for a career in cyber; referred to in conversation as "Maya," but the dancer in the original campaign was named Fatima; discussed as evidence of precarity in the arts and dance sector. Independent coverage

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)